Fighting the demons together
by LittleMermade
Summary: When Natasha is kept awake by the demons of her past she tries to run from her life as an Avenger. Steve is there to be her beacon. Oneshot, Can be read as Romanogers, but also as platonic friendship. :)


**Hey everyone! I have been travelling from Austria through Germany and the Netherlands and with the ferry to Great Britain and back in the last 4 weeks! I wanted to write 'No light, no light' while doing that, but I couldn't because I thought it wasn't good enough everytime I started. Instead I wrote two little One-Shots.**

 **This one is happening between Age of Ultron and Civil War. It can be read as additional scene, because it is canon with the MCU. If you ship it, read this one as Romanogers, but it also can be read as just friendship (but who wants that really? xD)**

 **I appreciate every kind of review and of course favourites! Enjoy :)**

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It was pitch black outside and not even the moon was shining that night. Aside of the birds and other animals who seemed to be busy at that time barely a sound could be heard. The silence in the kitchen of the New Avengers facility, however, was broken by the sound of two mugs rattling softly when they met. A slender figure was stuffing them in an elegant, black leather bag, which was already full of clothes. The woman patrolled through the kitchen and the living room again to make sure that she wasn't leaving anything important behind. When she made her way back to the bag her bare feet made no sound at all. She didn't need to turn the lights on – she knew her way around. The only light that set her sillhouette apart from her surroundings was the digital clock on the table. When it switched to 03:16 she looked through her bag again and apruptly stopped when she grabbed the sleve of her Black Widow suite. She stared at it and muttered a 'Fuck' before letting go of the black combat suit again.

Her weapons, the Bites, were missing and she knew exactly where she had left them. One of the tasers had malfunctioned the day before at the training room and she had put it in Steve's bag, because she didn't have her sports bag with her. And that's where it still must be – somewhere in Steve's room.

Natasha slowly sank to the floor beside her bag and buried her face in her hands while cursing under her breath. She couldn't search Steve's room for it in the middle of the night without waking him. But above all else, she couldn't stay. She couldn't pretend to be anything more than a criminal, a horrible person a second longer. What she had tod Bruce a few months ago at the Barton farm still lingered in her head. She was nothing more than an assassin. She wasn't an Avenger and the last thing she was, was a hero. She had repressed those things long enough to start training the new team, but now it all came back to her at once and this time there was no one to comfort her, to stop her from running.

With one hand Natasha pushed the strands of hair that had fallen in her face back and she took a deep breath. She was a spy, for God's sake. If she needed to break into Captain America's room, she would do it. Natasha gritted her teeth and started to get up from the floor. She grabbed her bag and left the kitchen using the stairs to their private floor. Everyone's rooms were on that floor. She passed her own and stopped at the next door which was Steve's. Carefully she placed her bag on the floor next to the wall and opened the door, of which she knew it was never locked. Tiptoeing she made her way through a small hallway. She opened the bathroom door and was glad to find the room empty. With a dull 'klick' she switched the lights on to search for her Widow's bite. The bathroom was nice and clean and aside from a few towels she couldn't find anything lying around. It gave her an uneasy feeling to search Steve's stuff when she opened the first drawer. There was nothing particularly interesting, so she left the bathroom like she had found it and moved on to the study.

Despite Steve's attitude to keep everything in order the desk looked like a mess. Natasha looked around the room, but it was quite small and there wasn't much space. In one corner the desk was consuming the space, leaving a spot for two white leather chairs by the window. Natasha stopped in front of the desk and looked down on the paper stacks on it. They were all titled Protocol something and a date. She realized that the mess in front of her had to be the paperwork of the Avengers team.

She had offered her help to Steve before, but he insisted on doing it himself, becuase „it was no big deal". Natasha sighed before moving on to the top drawer of the desk. In that one and the one below it were even more protocols, but those were sorted and filed. In the bottom drawer, however, Natasha found something that caught her interest. There were several pencils beneath a little book. She checked on the door again before taking the book out of the desk and opening it. Several pages of a different paper quality were about to fall to the ground, but Natasha managed tokeep them together on time. They didn't belong to the little book – Steve must have put them there.

When Nat started looking through the pages her heart skipped a beat. Realistic drawings of the facility, the Tower and the people filled the book. Some were just regular sketches or portraits, but some showed scenes that seemed to unfold before Natasha's eyes when she looked at the drawings.

There was one of Laura Barton preparing food and little Lila ready to help her mother. The next one was of Clint and Nathaniel sleeping in his arms. Natasha smiled at the image. That event had taken place just a week ago, when the whole Barton family had stayed with them for a few days. With the book in her hands Natasha sat down by the table while turning the page. It was a picture of Peggy as she was right now. Steve still visited her a lot in hospital.

In the sketchbook Natasha found images of the team – the old one as well as the new one – of children in the park and butterflies. On the other hand she saw a whole different side of Steven Rogers. There were pictures of the Winter Soldier, of men lying dead on the ground still holding onto their weapons, of a planecrash, of Red Skull, of the ruins of Sokovia – that was the war. The war as it really was. Only glorious stories survived time, only those were told. The death, the blood and the terror were never mentioned, but that didn't make the soldiers forget about it.

She was about to put the book back when she noticed a few crumpled pages hemmed in the back cover. Those were not taken from a differnet book, but had been ripped out and put back in later. Natasha bit her bottom lip when she looked at the first one of the three ruined sketches. It showed Steve himself, dirty and wounded, his face mirroring fear and concern. He was cradling an unconscious woman in his arms, who was also covered in dust. It was her. It was after they had discovered that Hydra was still active years ago. Steve had never told her how they had gotten away since it had happened. They hadn't talked about it again.

She kept looking at the page a little longer before placing it down on the table to reveil the next one.

Confused the Black Widow studied the next image. For her it was not at all differnet from the other pictures showing the team. The drawing showed her and Bruce at the party where Ultron had been created. She was facing Bruce and the spectator holding a glass in her hand. She was smiling kindly. Bruce was leaning against the bar, facing her. Therefore, only his back was visible from that perspective. Natasha thought that Steve had probably not been happy about how the drawing had turned out, so he had removed it, but overthought that later.

The last drawing that had been crumpled took Natasha a while to find out what it was showing. She saw a man and a young woman dancing. They were both smiling at each other and seemed to be close. Natasha was sure that the man was Steve. He was wearing his army uniform. The woman was wearing a dress and her hair was hatched darker than Steve's. There were little flowers fixed to her half-braid and her earrings looked as if they were shimmering. The woman seemed familiar to Nat, but she couldn't match her at that moment.

What really caught Natasha's eye however was that Steve's signature was missing. Instead of his initials two little words lingered at the right bottom corner, namely 'I can't'.

Natasha was about to put the book down when a voice brought her back to the moment: „What are you doing here, Nat?" She slightly jumped and couldn't prevent the sketchbook from falling to the ground, the loose pages scattered all over the floor. Natasha only managed to stare at the owner of the book and also the room. Steve sighed softly and walked over to her: „Hey… Don't worry about it. It's just pencil and paper."

Natasha slowly recovered from the shock: „No… I am sorry to wake you." Steve shook his head: „It's okay. I wasn't sleeping really… and I heard someone sneaking around here." Nat collected the drawings as fast as she could and handed Steve the book: „Sorry again… Bye." Steve gave her a confused look: „No, wait. What were you even doing here?" Natasha tried to put on a smile: „I don't really know. I must have been sleepwalking."

Steve furrowed his brow: „With your clothes on and your hair done, I think so." Natasha eyed the floor nervously: „I can't tell you, Steve… I need to go now." Steve had his arms akimbo: „Natasha… what's wrong? You seem differently." The Black Widow bit her tongue: „I can't be here right now. Just let me go, okay?"

„I can't just let you walk away… now that I have found you here, your trouble is also mine."

Natasha swallowed her need to cry: „Steve, stop. You can't understand. I once thought someone did, but he left me. I have to deal with it alone." Steve instantly thought of Bruce and his eyes wandered over to the window: „Whatever it is – you can tell me. Maybe I can help you." Natasha started sneering at that comment, although her eyes were still full of sadness: „Don't even think that, Rogers. That is something Captain America will never understand me." Steve turned to meet her eyes again: „Probably you just don't know all about Captain America." Natasha sighed: „Give me my Widow's bite and all of that drama is over. I need time for myself." Steve placed the sketchbook he was still holding on the table: „And during your vacation you need your Widow's bite because…?" Natasha started to lose her patience: „Maybe it's a mission. And it's none of your business! The weapon belongs to me."

Steve saw that shimmer of desperation in Natasha's eyes and slowly took a step in her direction: „Natasha… don't run away. We are supposed to be team-mates and team-mates trust each other." Natasha ran her fingers through her hair and bit her lip: „I can't do this any longer, I can't stay here, okay? I am an assassin, a murderer, a criminal. I am exactly that kind of person, that needs to be stopped by the Avengers and not one of them!" Steve couldn't help it, but smile: „Why would you think that? It doesn't matter what kind of a person you were in the past. That is over, you have changed. You are a good person now, Nat. You are the best choice for the Avengers."

Natasha just shook her head: „Of course you can talk like that. You are Captain America – the hero, the man with the plan. You are a saint, Steve." Steve just kept standing there and talked in a calm voice: „You think so, although you have seen those?" He gestured toward his sketchbook: „I am not perfect… no one is. Everyone in this team has their own ghosts. I have fought in the war. I have seen terrible things. I have killed men, innocent ones too, just because they weren't with us." Natasha let down her guard. She had expected some kind of speach about team building and helping each other. What she had gotten instead was too unexpected to interrupt it. Steve continued: „I have made decisions that keep me awake at night. You know… I can't always deal with being responsible, but it's my job.I hope to make the world a little bit better through being Captain America," Steve shook his head and rubbed his temple for a moment, „Captain America… what an unfitting name for the son of Irish refugees. Everything american about me is that I was born in the states." Natasha hesitated and her voice came out much more broken than she had intended: „Steve… I…"

Steve took her hands in his before she could say another word: „No, I don't need anything like 'I'm sorry' or 'I didn't know'. I can deal with it and despite everything I want to be an Avenger, because our team needs everyone to function."

Natasha considered her options, but the longer she thought about Steve's words the farther away went her urge to leave. She let out a shaky breath and hesitantly hugged him. Steve was a little surprised by her action, but hugged her back after a few seconds. Natasha found the courage to crack a smile and whispered a small 'Thank you' in Steve's ear. He smiled softly and hugged her a little tighter for a second before letting go: „You should try to catch some sleep before training starts again." Natasha nodded slightly: „Right…" Steve turned to go back to his bedroom, but stopped before walking out of the room: „Besides, I would miss your desperate attempts to prepare crêpes in the morning."

Natasha started grinning at his tease: „Well… Even though I can't cook with strawberries and cream, I know about lots of other things to do with those things." Steve's cheeks reddened a little and he continued walking fastly.

Natasha followed him with her eyes until she could not see him anymore. Afterwards she picked up her jacket from the floor, when her eyes fell on the sketchbook again. Since it was full and stored in the bottom drawer Steve probably didn't look at it so often. Probably he wouldn't notice if one of the pages was missing. Hesitantly Natasha picked the book up again and opened it at the last page. She looked at the image of Steve and the woman dancing again before taking the one with Steve and herself on it out. Carefully she folded it once and put it in her pocket. Afterwards she left the study and Steve's room to find her bag in front of the door. She sighed before picking it up and carrying it back to her room.

Maybe Steve was right, maybe he wasn't, but what she knew for sure was that she couldn't run from the demons of her past. She had to stay and face them. Otherwise they would haunt her forever. If she stayed she at least wasn't alone. There were people to support her, although she was the Black Widow. And as she dropped her bag and went back to bed she was happy that Steve had stopped her.

 **Thanks for reading! :)**


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